True Skate Review

If you’re like me at one point in your life you thought it would be cool to learn how to skateboard. You’ve seen the likes of Tony Hawk and such and decided that’d be a cool lifestyle or just hobby to have. Well if you’re also like me that dream failed as I soon realized I was terrible at anything remotely related to skateboarding. Luckily in the age of video games we have simulations of these things so I can pretend to be the next Tony Hawk. True Skate by True Axis is one of these and is a skateboarding simulation Android mobile game which allows you to do all the ollies and kickflips you want in the comfort of your bed or couch without having to actually venture into a real skatepark.

Ghost Board

Unlike games such as Tony Hawk Undergroundwhere you play an actual character on a skateboard, in True Skate it is just the board therefore giving the illusion that a ghost is skateboarding. This is an interesting approach but think it works perfectly in the touch screen mobile age. To control your skateboard or to do any real tricks it is all about swiping and flicking the board and the area around the board. To move and gain speed you swipe vertical next to the board just like you would swipe out your legs in real life. To steer you touch the center of the board and steer like that. Tricks are more complicated but with practice it becomes semi easy. An example of a trick would be an ollie where you have to flick up on the screen at the tail of the board and then level out by tapping the front. Other tricks like fickflips you kick up the back and then swipe horizontally for one spin before leveling out. Sounds complicated but there is an in game tutorial that explains it quite nicely…at least for the basic tricks, harder more “professional” tricks are learned by trial and error I have found.

Skatepark Sandbox

While I mentioned the tricks sounding hard to pull off, again with practice you’ll find them quite easy. To be honest very easy. Within minutes of learning how to do the basic moves like ollies and front kicks I was on to double kickflips, lazy grinds, 360 spins, etc. But the catch here is I wasn’t planning on doing any of these tricks. I really just kick up the board, wag my finger around a bit, hope to land right and rack up the points. I feel like a professional without putting forth any effort. True Skate makes it that easy! Of course that is just in the sandbox mode. There is also missions which require you to actually be fairly good at True Skate. These include following a ghost around the skatepark in a follow the leader sort of way copying all his tricks or doing an insane amount of tricks in a short time period. But if you just want to have fun and do some tricks the general free open world sandbox mode is great. Especially since it features so many features. You have half pipes, rails, steps, empty pools, walls…basically anything you could do a trick off of True Skate has you covered.

Pay to Skate

Now you may be wondering if True Skate is worth it since it is $1.99. I will say that it is perhaps the best skateboarding Android app I have personally seen and if you like skateboarding then it is a must buy. Even someone like me who normally would not buy a game like this found it to be a lot of fun just messing around. However, beware that to get further customization features in True Skate and a different skatepark it is another $1.99 or so each which is kind of ridiculous that in game currency counts for so little. But the base package is pretty good for the price I would say.